April 25, 2003 - University of Iowa: UI graduate student David Mohler arrived for his first day as an English teacher in the western African country of Gabon well-prepared with the lessons he was going to teach

UI graduate student David Mohler arrived for his first day as an English teacher in the western African country of Gabon well-prepared with the lessons he was going to teach. But Mohler learned a lesson about his adopted culture when he entered his classroom expecting to meet 110 students, and two showed up.

"I was really fired up, really ready to teach," Mohler said of the experience. "But I found out that in Gabon, it takes a little longer to get things rolling in the schools. If school starts October 1, the teachers might start showing up around the seventh, and by the fourteenth, the students come. People had tried to prepare me, but I didn't think it was really like that until I saw it for myself."

Mohler eventually found himself teaching more students than would fit in his classroom, and his discovery about the relaxed atmosphere of Gabonese schools was just the first of many learning experiences during his two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. For him, as for the more than 150,000 other Americans who have served as Volunteers, the Peace Corps was an opportunity to experience another culture firsthand by living and working in a developing community.

Conceived in 1960 by then-Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps is a government volunteer agency that aids developing countries by providing them with workers in areas ranging from health and nutrition to business to education, according to Peace Corps brochures.

Unlike overseas programs such as study abroad, Peace Corps Volunteers do more than just study a foreign language and culture -- they work directly with people in the communities they are placed in and are expected to live at a level comparable to that of their neighbors and behave as a member of the community.

Rather than trying to change a culture's way of life, Volunteers must be willing to "learn another language, another culture, another way of thinking and doing things," according to informational material.

This approach allows them to do their jobs effectively, but many Volunteers also see it as a way to discover another culture from the inside out.

"It's a real way in to appreciating another culture," Mohler, who now serves as the Peace Corps' UI campus representative, said in a presentation at an "International Mondays" luncheon.

For new Volunteers, assimilation into the culture they will become a part of begins with the first day of their three-month training, which includes intensive language instruction by native speakers, as well as technical training for their specific assignment and cultural information about the community they will be serving.

Being immersed in the local language and culture is fundamental in gaining skills necessary for success in the field, according to Mohler.

"What better way is there to learn a language?" he said. "You're forced to use it, but you're also in a structured class where they can answer specific questions, like what did someone mean by this, or why did I get slapped for saying that. You can't translate everything -- things have different meanings cross-culturally."

Having access to instructors from within the culture is also an important source of information about different cultural habits, he said. For instance, in Gabon, he discovered, pointing a finger is thought of as bringing bad luck on someone -- instead, people point with their lips or chins when giving directions.

"The cross-cultural training is hard to define," said Mohler. "We talked about things like appropriate clothing -- was it okay for women to wear shorts? How about men? A lot of it was survival skills -- stuff like how do you get a taxi, how do you get a bus, how do you get plane tickets? The kind of things you know in your own country, but that are totally different (in another culture)."

The cross-cultural and language skills presented in training provide knowledge essential for success in the field, but they don't compare to what Volunteers learn by living and working in the community.

Map courtesy of Peace Corps web site For Mohler, the real learning began when he arrived at his post and began to experience Gabonese culture firsthand and to form relationships with people in the community. As he discovered, gaining the acceptance of his neighbors often involved making an effort to do even simple things such as housework the local way.

"I was eager at first to show how responsible I was -- I cleaned my own house, did my own laundry," Mohler said. "Eventually my neighbor asked me, 'Why are you such a miser, why are you so stingy? You don't hire anyone to clean for you or wash your clothes, when plenty of people around here could use the jobs. Why don't you do it like others here?'

"I didn't see it that way at first," he explained. "I didn't want to exploit anyone." The experience led him to hire a local girl from his class to help him with household chores, but more importantly, it brought him another step closer to fitting into the culture.

But Mohler was not the only one making new discoveries. His students and the members of the community learned about him as well.

"The stereotype is that the American, or the white guy, always has money, so my students would always ask for money for lunch, or come to me with a flat bike tire and say, 'You're rich, why don't you buy me a new one,'" he said. "But once they came to my house and saw that I didn't have a TV, and that the only furniture I had was what was provided, they saw I wasn't so rich -- they thought, 'You're like us.'"

For Volunteers like Mohler, learning about another culture can lead to personal development as well.

According to information from the Peace Corps Web site, many returned Volunteers "will talk about how living in another country, learning another language, and becoming part of another culture changed the way they see the world and, more importantly, themselves."

In Mohler's case, his experiences changed the way he thought about his future plans and strengthened his intent to go to graduate school when he returned to the United States.

"It helped me focus on what's important -- for me, it's geological work, working with people, teaching," said Mohler, who is now working on a graduate degree in secondary French and teaching English as a foreign language.

"I thought I was narrowing my sights by choosing to go to Gabon," he told his audience at the International Mondays luncheon. "But instead, it's opened doors."

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Story Source: University of Iowa

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Gabon

Good morning, I'm Etho from Bitam (Gabon). I met many volunteer from peace corps. They was my teachers. There is, for example, Mrs Hollis, Mr Enderson, Mr Moller. They were at Bitam beetwen 1992...1996. I would to have their contact, if you can help me

ethoethoroland@hotmail.com

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